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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239024">these chains will not hold me down, they'll break and fall to the ground</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot'>notavodkashot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>watch as our fire rages, our hearts are never tame [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pocket Monsters: Sword &amp; Shield | Pokemon Sword &amp; Shield Versions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ace!Piers is Life, Epic Bromance, Gen, Just what the hell happened to Spikemuth anyway, Loss and Coping (or not) thereof, MCD warning does not apply to any canon character, No Romance, Rose is a monster, tragedy and recovery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:07:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,478</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dark is not evil, it's resilient.</p><p>Or, the story of Piers' life, all ups and downs and in-betweens.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kibana | Raihan&amp;Nezu | Piers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>watch as our fire rages, our hearts are never tame [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660219</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>146</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>these chains will not hold me down, they'll break and fall to the ground</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Look, I was writing Leon being cute with baby dragons and my id was like, that's cute and all, but let's break some hearts instead.</p><p>I'm tagging Major Character Death, because I know some people are iffy about it, but I can tell you it does not apply to any canon character and rather refers to one of my OCs. Better safe than sorry, though!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
    Dark is not evil, it’s resilient.
</p><p>
    He hears his Ma say the words, over and over again, as he grows up.
    Spikemuth is dark, all year round, polarized glass domes covering their
    streets, and that particular brand of sharp to their people that makes folk
    uneasy when they visit. Piers hears the whispers, when they come to the
    Gym, loitering around the lobby and watching his Ma pummel cocky,
overconfident kids who think <em>almost </em>there is the same as    <em>already</em> there.
</p><p>
    Spikemuth has always been dark, Piers knows, from stories and whispers that
    chronicle history that must never be written down, lest it becomes
    something other than the truth. Deep in the bowels of their mine lies a
    sleeping titan that sunlight must never touch. Before the domes, Spikemuth
    lived at night, closed up and barricaded during the day, isolated by their
    duty to be the shielding dark. His grandfather built them, found a way to
    dull sunlight enough for Spikemuth to bask in it, but that was hardly
    enough to shake off nearly three thousand years of stereotyping. Spikemuth
    is dark, through and through, and for Galar, that’s enough to be hated.
    Galar calls its greatest enemy <em>The Darkest Day</em>, after all, even if
    they no longer remember anything about it.
</p><p>
    But Dark is not evil, Piers knows, bone deep certainty he’s learned
    watching his Ma battle, on and off the field, the heart of Spikemuth
    itself, holding it together between her hands. Dark is feeling of her
    fingers on his hair, musing it up, and the edge of her laugh when she hears
    a good joke. Dark is the labyrinth of tunnels deep beneath the Gym, the
    comforting glow of the sableyes’s gems-like eyes peering at him from around
    the corner when they play tag. Dark is warm and soft, like taking a nap in
    a pile of zigzagoons and lioones in his Ma’s office, comfort and safety and
    all Piers has ever known, so long as his Ma’s tyranitar is there to watch
    his back.
</p><p>
    Dark is many things, but the one thing his Ma tells him, over and over
    again, is that it’s <em>resilient</em>.
</p><p>
    He doesn’t know what that means, but he doesn’t worry much about it. Big
    words are meant for big people, and he’s not very big at all. He’s got time
    to grow into that kind of thing, and he supposes, when that happens, he’ll
    just… know. The same way grownups seem to just know things, but don’t know
    how to explain them. Maybe that’s how you know you’re a grownup, Piers
    reckons, sitting in the dark, with Paul, his zigzagoon, asleep in his lap,
    as he stares up at the comforting glow of the titan deep below. He’s not
    supposed to be there, of course, because <em>no one</em> is supposed to be
    there at all, but he likes the quiet of the cave and he doesn’t think the
    faint reddish glow peeking through the cracks in the center of the chamber,
    hinting at something hidden even deeper, is anything other than cool.
</p><p>
    “It must be so nice,” Piers sighs, leaning to rest his chin atop Paul’s
    head, “to just… sleep. Forever!”
</p><p>
    He hopes the titan feels the same way he does, about the dark, that its
    dreams are peaceful and kind and the sort that let it stay right where it
    is, forever guarded by Spikemuth’s dark whispers.
</p><p>
    “Ma says I have to look after you,” he goes on, “when I become Gym Leader.
    But… I don’t know if I can do that. I have a sibling now. Or I will,
    anyway. Maybe they’ll be a better guardian for you.”
</p><p>
    The titan, of course, does not answer. Piers wasn’t really expecting
    otherwise. It’s the nice thing about coming down here, really. He can say
    whatever he wants, and no one but Paul and the titan have to know. There’s
    comfort in that, but he’s not sure he can put it into words, so he doesn’t
    try.
</p><p>
    Hours later, when his Ma’s mandibuzz comes swooping in to drag him back
    home, Piers clings to Paul and braces for a scolding. Instead, he finds
    himself rushing through the streets, trying to find Dr. Joanna and get her
    to his Ma as soon as possible. The rest is a blur of screaming and crying
    and blood and by the time that’s done, he finds himself sitting on the edge
    of the bed where his Ma’s asleep, his baby sister bundled up in his arms.
</p><p>
    Piers still not sure about the whole inheritance thing, protecting secrets
    and all the important things his Ma keeps telling him about, nudging him to
    take pokemon battles more seriously. But his sister? Small and helpless in
    his arms? Yeah.
</p><p>
    Even at twelve years old, Piers is pretty sure he’s going to spend the rest
    of his life looking after her, and the prospect doesn’t scare him in the
    least.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    At fourteen, Piers ventures out of the comforting darkness of Spikemuth
    into the bright and frankly overwhelming world outside.
</p><p>
    He’s not particularly enthused by the prospect of going out on the Gym
    Challenge – the more he practices and studies and battles, the more
    convinced he is, that he’s just not cutout for the post his Ma insists he’s
    meant to inherit from her – but he reckons it’s like a band-aid: better to
    just rip it out fast enough the pain doesn’t register at all. He doesn’t
    have grand aspirations to challenge the reigning champion – some ridiculous
    prodigy two years younger than him and on the cusp of becoming Galar’s
    longest reigning champion, if he manages to defend his title for the third
    time in a row. All he wants is to get through and challenge his Ma, fair
    and square, and then maybe she’ll agree with him, that he’s not good enough
    and focus on finding a better heir instead. Sure, inheritance is
    traditionally a matter of bloodlines and their Gym has upheld that
    tradition for centuries, but other Gyms have chosen to move away from that
    and instead choose heirs based on talent and skill.
</p><p>
    There’s no reason they can’t do that themselves! Well, no, he does know
    there’s a reason why the tradition has held in Spikemuth, the same way the
    legends and tales keep getting passed down as the stories children get told
    before they sleep, and that reason is ancient and asleep beneath the Gym.
    But he’s afraid what his incompetence will do to their city, and given how
    his Ma insists on believing he can do this, his only option is to show her
    how much he can’t.
</p><p>
    He finds an unexpected face waiting for him, outside the entrance to the
    tunnel connecting route 9 to route 7.
</p><p>
    “What the hell are <em>you</em> doing here?” Piers says, before he can
    think better of it, but the man hardly looks offended.
</p><p>
    Matter of fact, he laughs, pushing himself off the railing he’d been
    leaning on and walking over with the lazy air of someone who doesn’t really
    have much obligations at all. He’s wearing the stupid white robe and the
    dumb black scarf and the same placid smirk that always makes Piers want to
    throw himself at him like a tyranitar in a rampage.
</p><p>
    “Here,” the man says, smile sharp, as he throws a pokeball at Piers that he
    can’t do anything but catch. “Caught it for you, while I was waiting for
    you to finish dragging your feet and finally come out.” He snorted. “You
    could say it’s a talisman for good luck.”
</p><p>
    Piers clutches the pokeball in a tight fist, lips pursed into a thin line.
</p><p>
    “Fuck off, Dad,” he snarls, but doesn’t throw the pokeball back at him.
    Whatever’s inside it, it’s not its fault that his… father is such an ass.
    “Like you know anything about luck.”
</p><p>
    “Piers,” his father says, one eyebrow arched.
</p><p>
    “I don’t want to hear it,” Piers snaps back, and then storms through the
    tunnel without looking back, still clutching the pokeball in his hand.
</p><p>
    It’s not exactly the most auspicious start for his journey, to be honest,
    but he should have expected it. It was the kind of dumb thing his old man
    would do, like it somehow made up for everything else. The thing that
    pissed Piers the most, as he walked in a righteous fury straight to
    Hammerlocke, was the fact his Ma would just… welcome him back. Like she
    wasn’t mad at him for never being there. His parents never fought but Piers
    always hoped they would, like that would justify the tangle of angry
    feelings stuck in the back of his throat. His Ma only told him, over and
    over again, that he’d understand one day.
</p><p>
    It’s almost twenty minutes later, when he comes out of the other side of
    the tunnel and the sudden brightness nearly blinds him for a moment. He
    rubs his eyes with his sleeve, and tells himself it’s obviously the glare
    of the sun that’s causing the tears itching at the corner of his eyes. Then
    he remembers he’s still holding the pokeball in his hand, and with a sigh,
    he throws it out to see what’s in it.
</p><p>
    It’s a purloin.
</p><p>
    Too small to be a wild catch, Piers reckons, but it looks up at him
    curiously and doesn’t really flinch when he reaches out to pet its head. He
    should be angry about the lie – his father lies, how shocking – but all he
    feels is a bone-deep tiredness that makes him want to turn around and walk
    home and tell his Ma he’s changed his mind, he’s going to try again next
    year instead. Or the year after. Or maybe never!
</p><p>
    But if he goes back now, <em>he’ll</em> be there.
</p><p>
    “I think I’m going to call you Bjelland,” Piers tells his, apparently, new
    purloin, and watches it purr contently about the idea before picking it up
    in his arms.
</p><p>
    It’s tiny and soft and entirely innocent, so of course Piers has no choice
    but to take her along. If nothing else, it gives him something to think
    about, that isn’t the idea of his dad holding Marnie and pretending he’s
    got any right to be there at all.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    He meets Raihan four days after making the choice to brave the Wild Area,
    rather than take the train to Motostoke.
</p><p>
    Raihan is a small, stupid disaster waiting to happen and Piers feels a
    stroke of déjà vu: much like with Bjelland, he’s certain he’d be better off
    if he turned away, but he can’t. He <em>can’t</em>. Raihan’s knees are full
of scratches and he’s got a trapinch chewing through his sleeves and he’s    <em>ten</em> and he doesn’t have supplies.
</p><p>
    “Supplies are for losers,” Raihan informs him, boasting proudly, “I’m gonna
    be champion!”
</p><p>
    “You’re going to be grimmsnarl bait,” Piers deadpans as he refills his bowl
    from the pot of stew resting over the campfire, and then shoves it into
    Raihan’s hands. “Eat,” he commands, in the same tone he uses when he’s
    trying to coax Marnie into swallowing her peas.
</p><p>
    Raihan opens his mouth to retort something, something stupid and
    infuriating, Piers is sure, because he’s <em>ten</em> and he’s stupid and
    who the hell lets a ten-year-old go out into the Wild Area with nothing
    else besides a trapinch? But then, before Raihan can commit to stupidity,
    his stomach rumbles very loudly, and he takes the bowl meekly, clearly
    embarrassed.
</p><p>
    The sensible thing, Piers reckons, would be to march the insufferable kid
    right back to Hammerlocke and possibly yell at his parents about it. But,
    can he really trust them to take care of him? He’s ten and dumb and he’s
    gotten this far. Might as well make sure he gets to Motostoke, and maybe
    Piers can teach him a few things along the way, to make sure he’s alright.
</p><p>
    “Your tent is pink,” Raihan says, sitting by the fire and definitely not
    helping Piers set the thing up.
</p><p>
    He sounds dubious, like this is some kind of big deal. Piers, who’s lived
    all his life surrounded by black, white and the precise neon pink of
    Spikemuth’s uniforms, looks up from the support frame that’s fighting to
    get in shape, and offers a very dry arched eyebrow, clearly inviting Raihan
    to finish his comment.
</p><p>
    “There’s nothing wrong with pink,” Raihan mutters, looking away, “I’d just…
    never seen a pink tent before.”
</p><p>
    The thing is, he doesn’t have supplies for two. He’s got one bowl and one
    pan and one spoon and one fork and one knife. He’s got one tent and one
    sleeping bag and one pillow and one bag. He didn’t plan on traveling with
    anyone, and he didn’t think he’d need extras. But Raihan is small, at least
    – small and bony and forever seeking warmth while he sleeps – so they
    manage.
</p><p>
    It takes them almost two weeks to get to Motostoke, which is about a week
    and a half more than Piers had originally intended to make, but they still
    arrive a good five days before the opening ceremony. The main reason behind
    the delay is the fact Raihan feels the need to literally fight every single
    thing that stands in their way. Even things he really shouldn’t even try to
    fight at all. Piers has had to grab him – while Paul grabs his trapinch –
    and drag him away from stupid battles he shouldn’t even be trying in the
    first place, including a wild grimmsnarl somewhere south of the dust bowl,
    just to prove Piers really is always right.
</p><p>
    Despite it all, though, Piers enjoys the trip a lot more than he ever
    thought he would. Raihan is dumb and immature, sure, but he’s also funny
    and earnest and genuinely talented when it comes to pokemon battles. Piers
    knows himself stronger from their friendly matches – who cleans up after
    lunch, who sets up the tent, who chooses the topic of conversation while
    they walk – and he’s somewhat mystified by the fact he’s… enjoying the
    battles. He likes thinking around Raihan’s strategy – his strategy is
    mostly to hit hard and unrelenting – and he likes wining, though he doesn’t
    really mind losing.
</p><p>
    It’s fun, is the thing, in a way pokemon battles have never been for him,
    back in Spikemuth.
</p><p>
    But despite their friendship – they’re friends, now, obviously, there’s no
    point in even pretending otherwise – Raihan doesn’t talk much about
    himself. He doesn’t talk about his parents or his home or why he decided to
    run away. Technically, Piers doesn’t know for sure he ran away, but he’s
    got a hunch. And that hunch is why, when they reach the Stadium to register
    for the Gym Challenge and Raihan pales when the League personnel ask for
    his letter of endorsement, Piers decides to do something fundamentally
    stupid.
</p><p>
    “Here’s his letter,” he says, offering his own, which he knows for a fact
    does not mention Raihan at all, “Spikemuth’s Gym Leader is endorsing us
    both.”
</p><p>
    When the League official mentions this to him, Piers makes a show to roll
    his eyes, ask for a phone and call his mother. He puts her on speaker and
    stares at the stuffy-looking guy that keeps giving them dubious looks.
</p><p>
    “Mom,” he says, instead of Ma, because that gets her attention immediately,
    and also because he enjoys the way the League officer pales visibly on the
    spot, “we’re at Motostoke, but you forgot to put Raihan’s name in the
    endorsement letter.”
</p><p>
    “…well, shit,” his Ma says, callous and unrepentant, after a very small
    pause, and Piers can hear the laugh in her tone, well aware of what he’s
    doing, “that’s what I get for cutting corners and trying to make only one
    letter. Tell Raihan I’m sorry for the fuckup. I’ll be there for the ceremony
    by Thursday, so I’ll bring a brand-new letter by then. Ask the League kids
    if they can wait that long.”
</p><p>
    Dark is not evil, Piers knows, but people often think it is. People are
    scared of you, if you say you’re from Spikemuth, think you’ll mug them or
    hurt them somehow. And no one’s darker, no one’s scarier, than the
    Spikemuth Gym Leader. He watches the League official swallow hard.
</p><p>
    “That’s… that’s alright, Ma’am Gym Leader,” he says, voice shaky and
    nervous, unlike the almost… arrogant tone he took, when talking to them.
    “This phone call is good enough an endorsement, please don’t trouble
    yourself further on our behalf.”
</p><p>
    “Ha, I’m a Gym Leader, kid,” Piers hears his Ma say, tone mockingly
    unrepentant, “troubling myself on behalf of the League is about all I do
    for a living. But fine, then. Take this as my official endorsement and get
    my son and his friend setup properly.”
</p><p>
    “Yes, Ma’am.”
</p><p>
    They choose their numbers and are given their uniforms in record time, and
    all the while, Raihan is looking at Piers with wide, wide eyes, questions
    bubbling in the back of his throat that he clearly knows better than to ask
    in public. When they’re shuffled into their hotel room – Piers sees the way
    Raihan looks at him and asks them to put them in a double room, instead of
    two singles – Raihan looks at him like he wants to demand answers to so
    many questions, but then he thinks better of it, or he realizes Piers would
    ask questions right back, because instead he flops into bed and tries to go
    to sleep.
</p><p>
    Piers wakes up in the middle of the night when Raihan migrates into his
    bed, curled up tight against his side and pressing his cold feet against
    his ankles, and he can’t bring himself to be really mad about it.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    After the opening ceremony, his Ma invites them lunch.
</p><p>
    She likes Raihan, Piers can tell, because she ribs him and taunts him and
    he snarks right back, rudimentary wit giving its best. Of course, they were
    all on TV, during the ceremony, and Hammerlocke is only a few hours away
    from Motostoke by train, so by the time they’re heading back to the hotel,
    Raihan’s guardian is there looking for him.
</p><p>
    Piers braces for a fight, when Raihan shrinks visibly in her presence, but
    instead of yelling at him, she pulls him into a hug and cries about how
    worried she was about him being gone. Miss Fairweather, as she introduces
    herself, is the head of the foster home in Hammerlocke where Raihan’s been
    living for the past six years, and she’s not at all adverse on Raihan
    competing in the Gym Challenge. Not in principle, anyway. But their
    policy says he should be fourteen at least, before he goes out, which is
    about the same traditional age around Galar. The League itself doesn’t have
a minimum age limit – their ruling champion was Raihan’s age when he    <em>became</em> champion, after all – but she’s worried about him going out
    there, alone, because he’s <em>ten</em> and the kind of idiot that goes out
    into the Wild Area with nothing but a trapinch to his name.
</p><p>
    “He’s not traveling alone,” Piers says, without anyone asking him, “I’ll
    look after him.”
</p><p>
    “I don’t <em>need</em> a babysitter,” Raihan snaps petulantly, puffing up
    like a pissed off qwilfish.
</p><p>
    “Shoo,” Piers’ Ma says, waving a hand dismissingly at them, “grownups are
    talking.”
</p><p>
    Reluctantly, Piers drags Raihan away, and they end up having a battle down
    by the riverside. When they come back, Miss Fairweather invites them all
    for dinner and formally gives Raihan permission to go on the Gym challenge,
    provided he checks in weekly back home.
</p><p>
    It’s weird, Piers thinks, walking off into route 3, but he no longer wants
    to get his Gym Challenge done as fast as possible. He wants to enjoy it,
    see how far they can go. And he realizes, Dark is not evil, but it’s lonely
    sometimes, and it feels great not to be.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Two months after he left, Piers is guiding Raihan through the twisted
    labyrinth of Spikemuth’s streets, back to the Gym, back home.
</p><p>
    They’ve walked their way around Galar twice over at this point, challenging
    Gyms and each other, and maybe it’s Raihan’s influence, that stupid,
    bottomless overconfidence of his, but when Piers stands across the field
    from his Ma, he thinks he might actually stand a chance. And to be fair, he
    puts up a good enough show: Gene, his toxtricity, takes out his Ma’s
    crawdaunt and mandibuzz, and Mick, his malamar, manages to get through her
    weavile and her shiftry.
</p><p>
    But she isn’t pulling any punches, just like she said she wouldn’t, and he
    finds himself wincing when tyranitar lands on the field and conjures a
    sandstorm with a furious roar.
</p><p>
    Piers gives it his best, he knows he does. He knows his team is trying hard
    to do all they can. But tyranitar is an unmovable wall, feral and vicious
    like nothing else, and she grinds the entirety of his team under her heel,
    handing him the first real defeat with embarrassing ease.
</p><p>
    “Not evil,” she says, walking over to shake his hand after the end of the
    match, “<em>resilient</em>.”
</p><p>
    He watches Raihan eke out a victory by the skin of his teeth, saved only by
    vibrava’s resistance to the sandstorm, and admits to himself, he’s still
    not sure what resilient <em>means</em>. He should, in all honesty, stay
    home. His Gym Challenge is over and he’s done what he’d set out to do in
    the first place: prove to his Ma he’s not Gym Leader material. But he wants
    to follow Raihan to Hammerlocke, and to Wyndon – because there’s no doubt
    in his mind, that Raihan will conquer Hammerlocke – and when he tells his
    Ma he plans to accompany Raihan all the way to the championships, even
    though he’s not going to ask for a rematch or complete his badge
    collection…
</p><p>
    Well, she smiles and ruffles his hair and tells him to have fun.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Raihan doesn’t make it to the finals.
</p><p>
    He defeats Hammerlocke’s Gym Leader on a pretty spectacular rematch after
    she first defeated him pretty soundly. At the height of the battle, his
    partner evolves into a flygon and knockouts the gigantamax duraludon with
    its newly learned earthquake. Piers is in the stands when the crowd erupts
    into delirious, screaming chants, and something inside him twitches at the
    idea of ever receiving that kind of fervor from an audience. No one’s ever
    cheered for him that way, not even when he swept through Ballonlea’s Gym
    with only Paul. He’s not jealous of Raihan, per se, because he still
    doesn’t want to be a Gym Leader and he doesn’t… he doesn’t want to dedicate
    his life to pokemon battles and keeping secrets and playing politics the
    way his Ma does.
</p><p>
    But he wants an audience to scream his name, he wants the euphoria and the
    cheering and the physical weight of a stadium losing their mind.
</p><p>
    He’s spent all his life thinking of what he doesn’t want to do, that it
    only then it occurs to him that he’s never thought about what he’s going to
    do instead of becoming Gym Leader.
</p><p>
    He wonders, watching flygon circle around and throw Raihan on its back so
    it can fly a victory lap around the stadium, basking in the cheers, if he
    could ever make someone feel that way, with just his music.
</p><p>
    Maybe one day.
</p><p>
    Maybe.
</p><p>
    Piers remembers that, watching Raihan lose to Hammerlocke’s leader in the
    finals, watching him laugh and smile even as his dream of championship
    ends, because for him the battle itself is what matters, and defeat isn’t
    too hard to bear, when the battle before it was as spectacular as theirs.
    They stick around to watch the rest of the tournament, including Piers’ Ma
    using her tyranitar to make her way all the way up to the champion, only to
    fall to the monstrosity he calls a charizard.
</p><p>
    “I’m going to beat him,” Raihan says, as they walk back to their hotel, to
    clean up and meet his Ma for dinner to celebrate the end of their Gym
    Challenge. “You’ll see.”
</p><p>
    “Sure you will,” he says, because someone has to keep challenging Raihan’s
    overinflated sense of importance, and that might as well be him.
</p><p>
    …but deep down?
</p><p>
    Deep down, Piers does believe him.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    After the Gym Challenge, Raihan gets invited to join Hammerlocke Gym as an
    official Gym Trainer, since he impressed the Gym Leader so much with their
    battles.
</p><p>
    Piers just goes home and, after a month of fretting about it, buys himself
    a guitar.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    The next year, Raihan doesn’t need Piers to lie for him, since he’s
    endorsed by Hammerlocke’s Gym Leader.
</p><p>
    He doesn’t need Piers at all, really, but Piers still sticks around and
    decides to go with him on a two-month camping trip where he collects no
    badges at all. When Raihan asks, Piers points out Raihan is more likely to
    set himself on fire than cook anything edible, but deep-down Piers thinks
    Raihan knows he just wanted to hang out with him again. They talk on the
    phone a lot and Raihan visits often, but it’s not the same.
</p><p>
    Piers takes pictures with his phone that he sends home immediately after
    taking them, because Marnie is three years old and apparently inconsolable
    without pictures and video and calls to hear his voice, and Piers is so
    very fucked, he knows, because he shouldn’t be indulging his sister and
    spoiling her rotten, but what else is he supposed to do? …besides tease
    Raihan relentlessly for his habit to buy every bit of crap he finds that
    happens to be trapinch-themed, that is.
</p><p>
    Raihan makes it to the finals again, and this time it’s Piers’ Ma who
    defeats him before he can challenge the champion directly.
</p><p>
    He still gets to battle him, though, because they run into him, at the
    Rose, and before Piers can stop him, Raihan has walked over to him and
    loudly proclaimed he’s going to beat him one day. Piers gets a sinking
    feeling in the pit of his stomach, when the champion grins widely and
    immediately offers to fight Raihan right there and there. He wins, of
    course, his charizard making short work of Raihan’s flygon, though Piers
    spends the entire battle burying his face in his hands, so he doesn’t
    really know the specifics.
</p><p>
    Soon enough, League personnel are there to escort the champion away,
    because it’s not exactly a great look for him, fighting battles in a hotel
    lobby, and Piers is left to the task of dragging the starry-eyed Raihan
    back to their room.
</p><p>
    “He’s so cool, Piers,” Raihan says, awe and borderline worship in his tone.
    “And I’m going to beat him.”
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Another year, another Gym Challenge he very pointedly doesn’t participate
    on, and the first time he reckons he doesn’t really need to go along with
    Raihan.
</p><p>
    Raihan has shot up, over the winter, one solid head taller than Piers now,
    lanky and taunting as ever. He knows how this works, he knows his way
    around the Wild Area and the routes and all the challenges. But even so,
    Piers doesn’t feel superfluous at their camp, singing at the pokemon in
    Raihan’s team, with Gene playing a soft tune to go with the words.
</p><p>
    He wonders what’s going to happen, once Raihan becomes champion, if they’ll
    still find a way to hang out like this, or if being champion will make him
    embrace all of Galar’s supposed truths. Raihan’s the one person Piers has
    ever met who understands – not evil, resilient – all those weird,
    roundabouts truths he’s never been good at explaining, because he’s become a grownup
    without meaning to.
</p><p>
    Alas, the year Raihan sharpens his team, three dragons out of six, at the
    championships, that happens to be the year that Ballonlea’s Gym Leader
    decided to join the championships again.
</p><p>
    “Next year,” Piers says, after the massacre she unleashes on Raihan in the
    field, “next year for sure.”
</p><p>
    And when Raihan clings to him, spine bent so he can bury his face into
    Piers’ hair, Piers remembers this idiot child might be taller than him, but
    he sure as hell isn’t any older than twelve.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    A year later, just as spring is starting, Piers is debating with
    himself, if he should really go along with Raihan’s Gym Challenge, when his
    Ma has been nudging him to take a permanent spot in the Gym: at the very
    end of the labyrinth that serves as their challenge, so he can be the last
    line of defense. She’s not ordered him to, though, because she never really
    does, and he knows that means he won’t have anyone to blame, whatever he
    ends up choosing to do.
</p><p>
    He studies music, instead, passing the last few days before he’s due to
    give her and Raihan an answer sitting in his bed, pawing at his guitar and
    trying to coax a melody out of it.
</p><p>
    “I want a pokemon.”
</p><p>
    Piers looks up from the book he’s reading, trying to learn how to notate
    sheet music properly, and finds Marnie, all of five years old, standing on
    his doorway and looking supremely put out.
</p><p>
    “Okay?” Piers says, unsure what to reply to that.
</p><p>
    “You have one,” Marnie insists, though truth be told, Piers has well more
    than the one, “and so does everyone else at the Gym.” She purses her lips,
    looking up at him with all the solemnity her tiny frame can contain. “So I
    want one!”
</p><p>
    “I’m not saying no,” Piers points out, putting down the book and shifting
    his posture enough that she immediately crosses the room to settle into his
    lap. “But why are you telling me? Why don’t you ask Ma?”
</p><p>
    “I don’t want a <em>zigzagoon</em>,” Marnie says, put out, and Paul makes a
    wounded noise, looking up from the pillowfort at the foot of Piers’ bed.
    Marnie refuses to look at him, instead fixing her stare on her brother.
    “Zigzagoons are <em>your</em> thing. Ma has tyranitar and Raihan has flygon
    and Dad-“
</p><p>
    “Okay,” Piers says, not really wanting to hear her finish that sentence at
    all. “Okay, I get it.” He bounces the knee she’s sitting on, playfully, and
    smiles when she pouts. “Do you have anything in mind?”
</p><p>
    The old man drops by, once or twice a year, and Marnie is still little, so
    she doesn’t care. He lets her stick her hands into his pockets and steal
    sweets from there, and she doesn’t hate him for all the endless days he’s
    been gone. Piers tells himself she doesn’t miss their Dad because he’s been
    there, always, because he’s made sure his sister wants for nothing, ever.
    And that’s good enough, he supposes. He can hate him enough for the both of
    them, and spare Marnie the burden.
</p><p>
    It's fine.
</p><p>
    “I want something special,” she declares, but doesn’t bother to elaborate
    further on that.
</p><p>
    “I’ll try,” Piers promises, because she could ask him to bring her the moon
    wearing a necklace of stars, and he would promise to find a way.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Somehow, on their trip from Motostoke to Hammerlocke, he ends up following
    Raihan into the forbidden Lake of Outrage and beating the shit out of a
    group of poachers.
</p><p>
    Raihan ends up adopting an orphaned goomy, too weak to even keep itself
    upright, finally giving his oversized hoodies a good use, and letting the
    small thing sleep in there. For his trouble, Piers nearly loses a finger
    while breaking a zweilous free of the cage it was stuck in, when the damn
    thing lashes out at him, biting wildly all around as it tries to get its
    bearings. It demolishes what’s left of the camp with a staggeringly
    powerful dragon pulse, but thankfully it decides to leave without attacking
    them.
</p><p>
    “Fucking assholes,” Raihan mutters, long after reinforcements have come
    along to fetch the poachers under Paul’s none too friendly guard, and
    they’ve decided to camp there for the night.
</p><p>
    “People are dicks,” Piers points out, shrugging, “what else is new?”
</p><p>
    Raihan says nothing, gently coaxing his new goomy to eat, letting it suck
    on his fingers. Piers busies himself cleaning up dinner and finds they have
    a surprise visitor in their camp. The morpeko is clearly angry, bristling
    at him and gnashing its teeth threateningly. Piers has only seen one of
    those maybe once out in the wild, in the fields outside Spikemuth. He knows
    better than to feed it, he does. Morpeko are well-known troublemakers and
    voracious eaters, and they get angry and demanding if you feed them. He
    knows.
</p><p>
    But it’s tiny and furious and he still has about a plateful of stew left.
</p><p>
    Of course the damn thing follows him everywhere, after that. All the way to
    Spikemuth, in fact, where Marnie looks at it with wide, bright eyes, and
    Piers realizes there’s no point in arguing at all. He gives his sister a
    duskball – he never actually <em>caught</em> the morpeko, it just trailed
    after him because he was a sucker who couldn’t stop feeding it whenever it
    made eyes at him – and watches impassively as Marnie scores herself her
    first pokemon.
</p><p>
    “Will you teach me?” Marnie asks, holding morpeko tight against her chest
    and looking up at him, eyes hidden behind her bangs. “How to battle?”
</p><p>
    Piers smiles.
</p><p>
    “Of course.”
</p><p>
    Because of course he will.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Raihan loses to Leon – Raihan calls him by name, now, like they’re friends,
    for all he declares his ever burning rivalry and promises again to defeat
    him, next year – but it was pretty clear, for anyone who cared to look,
    that he hadn’t really struggled with the championship matches prior to that
    fight.
</p><p>
    “She’s going to break taboo,” his Ma says, watching Raihan talking with
    Delilah, Hammerlocke’s Gym Leader, “and that’s going to be a shitshow.”
</p><p>
    Out of all the Gyms in all of Galar, there is only one place that is as
    stuck up on inheritance traditions as Spikemuth, and that’s Hammerlocke.
    Spikemuth has its secrets underground, guarded by the labyrinth beneath the
    Gym. Hammerlocke has its pompous vault full of dusty old tapestries that
    Raihan sneaked him in to see, the previous summer, and which Piers had not
    been very impressed by, because they did not match the old bedtime stories
    he’d once been taught. No one knows what Spikemuth guards, and that’s just
    the way it should be, and has always been, since ages before the League,
    when the families of who became Gym Leaders were nobles instead, lords and
    ladies guarding their cities and living in their ostentatious castles. But
    everyone knows of Hammerlocke’s vault, if not what exists within.
</p><p>
    Piers agrees with his Ma, Delilah is definitely grooming Raihan to take her
    place at the head of Hammerlocke, and when she does, passing over her
    children – children who decided not to stay in Galar at all, from what
    Piers has heard – it’s going to be a mess.
</p><p>
    “You could beat her to it,” Piers points out, and then shrugs when she
    gives him an unamused look for his efforts.
</p><p>
    “I already have an heir,” she says, rolling her eyes like the idea doesn’t
    even merit thinking about.
</p><p>
    “A shit one, though,” Piers snorts, and then makes a face when she tugs him
    close and presses a loud kiss to his cheek. “Ma.”
</p><p>
    “Spikemuth doesn’t need a strong Gym Leader,” she says, winking at the
    dubiousness on his face, “it just needs one who understands what dark
    means.”
</p><p>
    “Fine, I’ll inherit,” Piers says, giving her a dirty look. “Then nothing’ll
    stop me from having Marnie inherit from me.”
</p><p>
    His Ma laughed.
</p><p>
    “Except the bit you’ll never make your sister do anything she doesn’t want
    to,” she points out, remorseless, “yeah. Sounds like plan.”
</p><p>
    “You don’t know,” Piers insists, wrinkling his nose, “maybe she’ll want it
    one day.”
</p><p>
    “Maybe, maybe not,” she snorts, “but when Raihan inherits, you’ll serve was
    Gym Trainer. No more running away.”
</p><p>
    Piers sighs, but he knows better than to argue.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Piers considers not accompanying Raihan on his yearly pilgrimage around
    Galar, well aware this will be the last time he’ll go: this time next year,
    Raihan will be a Gym Leader, and Piers… won’t be. He realizes he’s trying
    to cut off his nose to spite his face, and then he goes to the other
    extreme, wondering if he should try this year, do the challenge himself and
    prove himself in the eyes of the world, before he’s saddled with a title
    he’s not too keen to have.
</p><p>
    In the end he decides to do neither, and instead enjoy the trip.
</p><p>
    “We don’t have to stop,” Raihan says, as they lie around the fire, ignoring
    the chill and watching the stars dotting the sky-high above route 10. “The
    camping trips, I mean.”
</p><p>
    “You’ll be a Gym Leader, this time next year,” Piers points out, “and I’ll
    be a Gym Trainer. We won’t go on the Gym Challenge anymore.”
</p><p>
    “Well, no,” Raihan agrees, “but nothing says we can only go camping during
    the Gym Challenge.” He looks over at Piers, with that dumb awkwardness of
    his, and all Piers can see is the small dirty-kneed brat trying to pretend
    he knew what he was doing, when he wandered out into the Wild Area. “We
    could go out after. Just… hangout. And stuff.”
</p><p>
    “We can’t take two months off to go camping, Raihan,” Piers drawls, one
    eyebrow arched, but given the look Raihan gives him, he finds himself
    laughing, closing his eyes and folding his arms behind his head. “Two
    weeks, though. World won’t end over that.”
</p><p>
    Raihan reaches out to punch his arm, laughing.
</p><p>
    “You do like me,” he says, utterly delighted, “you wanker, admit it.”
</p><p>
    “Shan’t,” Piers snorts, and then rolls onto his side, turning his back to
    him. “You’re insufferable and an idiot.”
</p><p>
    “And also your best mate,” Raihan insists, nudging Piers back with a foot.
</p><p>
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Piers retorts, and then lets out an    <em>oof</em>, when Raihan throws himself onto his back, in a strange mixture
    of tackle and hug. “Raihan!”
</p><p>
    “’cause you’re mine,” Raihan whispers, face pressed against the back of
    Piers’ neck. “My best mate, I mean. And I’m going to inherit the oldest,
    largest Gym in Galar, Piers, what the fuck is my life.”
</p><p>
    “You wanted to be larger than life, dumbass,” Piers says, but doesn’t pull
    away from Raihan’s arms. “Now fucking act like it.”
</p><p>
    Raihan laughs and laughs, and through it all, Piers keeps a hand on his
    arm, anchoring him in place. It reminds him keenly of Marnie clinging to
    his side while she gets a splinter taken out of her finger. Like he’s their
    shelter from the storm, his sister and his best friend, even if all he does
    is be there and listen and tease them when they’re done.
</p><p>
    Resilient, Piers supposes, is one way of calling it.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Raihan spends a good deal of his first year as Gym Leader visiting
    Spikemuth and dodging relentless interviews. That’s not to say Hammerlocke
    is not well looked after, because it is. But Raihan learns quickly that
    people do not follow him into Spikemuth, and clearly that’s something
    valuable, given the loud screaming tone of the news about his inheritance.
</p><p>
    At some point he buys himself a house, far too large for just himself, but
    Piers nonetheless visits and brings him housewarming gifts, including
    copies of the pictures his Ma has taken over the years, of the two of them
    being silly and dramatic and just… friends. Raihan insists on putting
    dragon decals on the windows of his brand-new house and Piers promises to
    tease him about it until they both die.
</p><p>
    And it’s good, is the thing.
</p><p>
    Piers doesn’t hate working in the Gym, and he’s not actually the weakest
    trainer there – he can’t be, he realizes, he’s on Raihan’s level and Raihan
    has been runner-up to champion for two years running, now. He has fun
    putting the fear of Paul and himself into the cocky little shits that think
    they’re good enough to challenge his Ma.
</p><p>
    It’s good!
</p><p>
    It’s so good he can’t remember why he didn’t want to do this, why he was
    afraid he wouldn’t be good enough. It’s good and he thinks, with the stupid
    hopeful tone of someone who knows no better, that it’s going to last
    forever.
</p><p>
    It doesn’t.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    The day Spikemuth is destroyed, Piers is meant to be out on route 9,
    coaching Marnie and his fellow Gym Trainers on the basics of doubles.
</p><p>
    Raihan specializes in those, and Piers has been using them to teach Marnie
    the ropes, but he needs suitable opponents to get her more up to speed to
    things, than just random wild pokemon. Piers has been holding something
    like classes on the matter for a while now, and it’s become just another
    comfortable ritual around the Gym.
</p><p>
    That morning, however, he realizes he’s left his phone back home, and he
    tells Marnie and the others to go ahead while he goes back for it.
</p><p>
    He makes it back to the Gym just in time to watch it go up in flames, earth
    shaking violently under his feet as the force of the explosion throws him
    to the ground. He stares as the glass domes around the city fracture and
    then collapse, throwing his arms over his head to try and shield himself
    from the impact. He feels the sharp edges cut through skin, pain blooming
    hard and loud all along his arms and his legs. There’s a second round of
    explosions, distinct from the first, separated by something like a rest in
    his sheet music, and then the ground <em>really</em> starts to shake, and
    almost as in a dream, Piers realizes that whatever caused the explosions
    has also caused the tunnels of the mine to collapse.
</p><p>
    It’s like knocking a house of cards, Piers thinks, watching entire
    buildings sinking into the ground, unable to really hear the screaming – or
    anything at all – the entirety of the city dragged into a gigantic
    sinkhole.
</p><p>
    It stops a lot sooner than he expected, before it kills him. But the ground
    is unstable still, rumbling under his feet, and people are still screaming
    and the glass keeps falling and–
</p><p>
    And.
</p><p>
    Well.
</p><p>
    Someone grabs his arm – he keens like a wounded animal, because they don’t
    care for the three-inch gash where the glass sliced like butter down his
    arm – and drags him away. He gets caught in the river of people rushing
    away, far away, while the solid rock under the city splinters off and a
    good half of town just… falls down the newly forged cliff and straight into
    the sea.
</p><p>
    Poof.
</p><p>
    Just like that.
</p><p>
Piers huddles with the crowd of survivors – Spikemuth was never    <em>big</em>, of course, no one wanted to live in the dark town, but this
    was maybe a tenth of the people who used to call the labyrinth town home,
    and the thought sits airy and slick in the back of his throat, like a hurl
    he won’t allow himself – and waits to hear the reassuring command of his
    Ma’s voice, barking at people to fall into place. He waits and waits and
    realizes everyone else is waiting too, that they might all wait forever and
    still.
</p><p>
    Still.
</p><p>
    Piers is nineteen years old, the day the Spikemuth Gym goes up in flames
    and takes down half of the city with it. He’s nineteen and he doesn’t know
    what he’s going to do with his life, beyond allowing himself the nice,
    comfortable inertia that he’s fallen into. He’s got an obstagoon named Paul
    that has been his partner since he was four, and he likes cashews, more
    than almonds. He’s nineteen years old and stupid and irresponsible and
    completely wrapped around the whims of his sister. His sister, who is only
    seven years old and an absolute brat, because he’s never been able to say
    no to her.
</p><p>
    He’s nineteen, and he sits there and realizes his mother is dead, gone with
    the Gym and their home and everything else.
</p><p>
    He’s nineteen when he realizes someone’s going to have to stand up and be
    in charge, lest people go from shocked to panicked to violent, and then
    make things worse.
</p><p>
    He’s nineteen when he realizes that someone is going to have to be him.
</p><p>
    “Shut up!” He snarls, standing up and pretending he’s not tracking blood
    everywhere.
</p><p>
    He’s not loud, by nature, but somehow, amidst the panic and the fear and
    the sickly desolation slowly sinking in, his voice echoes.
</p><p>
    And the survivors listen.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    By the time Rose comes around, hours later, the panic has passed.
</p><p>
    Grief is on hold while people scramble about to make sure everyone is safe,
    and Piers is at the center of it, giving orders almost on inertia, since
    they keep obeying them. Shelters have popped up, for children and the
    elderly and the injured. Another group of people has set out to cook food
    based on the supplies that have been scavenged by the group of brave idiots
    willing to go back into the city and dig out survivors and useful things.
    Piers isn’t tracking blood everywhere, and someone has bothered to bandage
    him up, at least a little. Marnie is being looked after by his fellow Gym
    Trainers, whom he might or might not have threatened to skin alive if a
    single hair in her head was harmed. He can’t remember, but he knows he
    means it, anyway.
</p><p>
    He’s stressed and tired and in pain and stubbornly not thinking about the
    fact his Ma <em>still</em> hasn’t crawled out of the rubble, like he knows
    she will. She could. She would.
</p><p>
    Will.
</p><p>
    “My dear boy,” the Chairman says, when he sees him, eyes solemn, “I am so
    sorry for your loss, for the great tragedy you’ve endured today. Please,
    we’re here to help.”
</p><p>
    His Ma – has – never liked Rose much, he knows, having been present the day
    she threatened to run him out of the city with a pack of linoone if he ever
    came back. Rose is the antithesis of them, Piers has heard his mother say:
    nice isn’t good, and oh, Rose is <em>good</em> at nice.
</p><p>
    And for a moment there, Piers feels his bones creaking under the weight,
    and he wants to bask in nice. He wants to reach out and grasp Rose hand and
    just let someone else take control. They’ll obey, he thinks, if he does it.
    They’ll follow Rose if he endorses him, take his word for it and… and…
</p><p>
    “It’s a bit ahead of schedule,” Rose says, voice still at that perfectly
    venomous register that aims for soothing and makes Piers bristle instead.
    “But it’s a good thing the construction of Neo Spikemuth has already begun.
    Together, we can make sure that—”
</p><p>
    Piers doesn’t know why he does it, only that it makes sense. Only that if
    feels right. He feels Rose’s face collide with his knuckles and the force
    of the impact travel up his arm, pressure tight and painful, until he feels
    the cuts burst open and start bleeding again.
</p><p>
    “Get the fuck out of my city,” Piers snarls, watching the man stumble but
    not fall. Rose opens his mouth and Piers bares his teeth, eyes narrowed,
    his best impression of a tyranitar about to let loose. “You fucking
    corporate vulture, corpses aren’t even cold yet and you’re already here to
    strip them bare, huh.”
</p><p>
    “Emotions are running high,” Rose says, wiping off the blood of his split
    lip, “it’s perfectly understandable. But the truth-“
</p><p>
    “The truth is that you’ve been trying to kick us out of our own goddamn
    land for years,” Piers snaps, loud enough there’s no way people can’t hear,
    considering the silence pervading all around. “The truth is my Ma told you
    to fuck off and you think that just because she’s g-gone, now, you get to
    pretend your shit don’t stink. Well, I’m here to tell you, you’re fucking
    wrong.”
</p><p>
    “You need me, young man,” Rose snaps right back, tone sharp with an edge of
    smug certainty that makes blood rush harder through Piers’ veins. “You
    need—”
</p><p>
    “Shitfuck all from you,” Piers roars, fists clenched tight and ignoring the
    steady drip of blood down the length of his arm, “so you can take your
    fucking poisoned charity and shove it where the sun don’t shine, Spikemuth
    ain’t on sale.”
</p><p>
    “Oh dear child, you know better than to think <em>anyone</em> would be
    willing to pay anything for this ruin?” Rose says, motioning over to the
    remnants of their homes. “I’m offering you the future, you can either join
    me and make the best of it, or doom your city to extinction. You don’t—”
</p><p>
    Piers is about to throw another punch when a ball of wet, slushy mud slams
    on Rose’s face, thrown from the crowd of restless people that has gathered
    all around them. Rose turns to glare at the crowd and identify the
    offender, and he gets nailed in the back of the head by another throw.
</p><p>
    “Are you a gambling man, Chairman Rose?” Piers’ back stiffens on reflex at
    the familiar voice, and turns to find his old man sitting on a makeshift
    table, fiddling with a coin. “I am, y’know. And I really don’t like your
    odds, if you stick around for them to move on from mud to rocks.”
</p><p>
    For a moment, the silence lingers, heavy like lead inside Piers’ lungs.
</p><p>
    “I’ll be back,” Rose says, wiping mud off his face, eyes no longer quite so
    solemn. “When the tempers have had a chance to cool.”
</p><p>
    “No,” Piers says, deadly quiet, before his Dad can interject, “you fucking
    won’t.”
</p><p>
    The moment stretches, thin and tenuous like a spider’s thread, taunt almost
    to snapping point, and then Rose turns around and walks away, his stupid
    entourage following soon after.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Piers stares a little when his Dad offers him a cigarette, once they’ve
    moved away from the main camp and they’re sitting on a rock by the shore
    leading out to the bay, ignoring the icy sea breeze heading their way. And
    then he realizes it’s kind of stupid to pretend at all, so he grabs it and
    leans in towards the flickering flame of the lighter, mentally bracing
    himself.
</p><p>
    “Have you gone down?” His Dad asks, head tilted to the side, “to the
    labyrinth?”
</p><p>
    Piers feels his left eye twitch on reflex.
</p><p>
    “Been a bit busy,” he snorts, looking away, “keeping people alive and all.”
</p><p>
    “I figured you’d be,” his Dad replies, and then shrugs slightly. “Most of
    the labyrinth collapsed after the initial shockwave.” He puffs out a cloud
    of smoke above their heads and gives Piers a very significant look. “Funnily
    enough, only the tunnel to the south survived intact.”
</p><p>
    There’s no tunnel to the south, Piers doesn’t say. The point of the tunnels
    is that they all lead to the central chamber, the final dead end where the
    titan sleeps. The titan that didn’t wake up even when they dropped an
    entire city on it. If Piers had never seen it, if he didn’t know, for sure,
    what his family had spent entire generations protecting, he’d dismiss it
    all as myth. Of course there was nothing under Spikemuth.
</p><p>
    Of course.
</p><p>
    Piers changes hands, holding the lit cigarette, leans over the side and
    hurls at the back of the rock he’s sitting on. He doesn’t even care that
    his Dad reaches out to hold his hair out of his face.
</p><p>
    “Did you find her,” he asks, not looking up, not sure he can, “down there?”
</p><p>
    His Dad fingers his hair gently, and he hates himself by how comforting he
    finds it.
</p><p>
    “No.”
</p><p>
    His old man lies and he’s never around enough for Piers to get good at
    gauging his lies, but that one… that one he forces himself not to read too
    much into.
</p><p>
    “Why are you here?” Piers demands, scrambling for anger, for anything but
    the bone-deep grief bubbling up the back of his throat.
</p><p>
    He can’t be sad, now, he’s not allowed. He needs to keep going, and the
    only thing that can do that is rage. He needs—
</p><p>
    “Lydia told me to come,” his Dad says, and Piers is not ready for how much
    it hurts, to hear his Ma’s name in his voice. “Said she had a hunch shit
    was about to hit the fan. This… this was significantly more shit onto a far
    larger fan that I expected.”
</p><p>
    Piers laughs without meaning to, and a few stray tears dig at his eyes
    while he does.
</p><p>
    “Do you want me to stay?” His Dad asks, voice soft and eyes kind, and Piers
    kinda wants to punch him just as hard as he punched Rose. “I’m not…
    entirely sure what I’d do, even, but. I’ll stay if you need me. Either of
    you.”
</p><p>
    Piers licks his lips, ignores the taste of bile still on them, and swallows
    hard.
</p><p>
    “Can we not do this right now?” He asks, and he feels successful that it
    doesn’t come off as begging. “Can we not do the crappy lifetime family
    reunion bullshit? I can’t deal with it and everything else all at once.”
</p><p>
    He braces for a fight. Deep down, he’s so desperate for a fight, a good
    brawl, a chance to get the screaming out of his head and put it into his
    fists. But all his Dad does is shrug and nod and pat his shoulder, before
    he walks away.
</p><p>
    Maybe, Piers thinks, that’s the universe being kind. Then the universe
    reminds him it’s got nothing but contempt left for him.
</p><p>
    “Piers?” Marnie calls out, walking up to him. “Where’s Ma?”
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Dark is not evil, it’s resilient.
</p><p>
    And there’s no darker town in all of Galar, than Spikemuth.
</p><p>
    So even after it feels like the world ends, Spikemuth remains. Piers sends
    his Dad away, both because he can’t deal with having him there, and because
    he knows people, he’s important, beyond Galar. His Dad can go on doing what
    his Ma had wanted from him: to investigate and root out the truth. Piers
    doesn’t care about Galar – he does, he cares, viscerally, and he hates
    himself for it – but if Spikemuth was a test run, someone ought to find out
    what’ll happen next. Someone ought to be the hero, and that obviously
    cannot be him. Heroes aren’t dark and bitter and full of rage, so he sends
    out his Dad to find one. Or to stay away.
</p><p>
    Raihan arrives a few days later, with help and supplies and a small army of
    dragon pokemon to help clear the rubble and reinforce the cave in, so they
    can finally start rebuilding. And they will rebuild, Piers knows, if
    nothing else to spite the goddamn ground itself. Raihan comes because no
    one else will, because outside those with direct ties to Spikemuth, Galar
    is blissfully unaware of anything being amiss.
</p><p>
    There was an earthquake in Hammerlocke, the same day Spikemuth collapsed,
    but on a much smaller scale. No one got hurt, in Hammerlocke, but the news
    make a point to remind people about it, while purposefully keeping quiet
    about Spikemuth. Because why would they care? Spikemuth is dark, and dark
    is evil. Spikemuth keeps secrets and isolates itself, has for centuries.
    Losses to them are not felt elsewhere.
</p><p>
    Piers sees the shape of Rose’s hand in the coverage of the whole thing,
    feels out the spaces where the Chairman is writing out a letter to him,
    personally, trying to force his hand. Without Galar, it seems he’s saying,
    without him, how could Spikemuth recover? How could they survive?
</p><p>
    <em>Friends</em>
    , Piers thinks, watching Raihan lead his squad of volunteers and pokemon
    back into the ruins, <em>that’s how they’ll get by</em>. Friends and people
    who care, who are worth caring for. It would be easier, if they had the
    whole weight of the Macro Cosmo conglomerate behind them. Sure, money and
    hands would make this easier. But it’s not impossible, without it. And it’s
    better to go without, considering the price they have to pay.
</p><p>
    “I’m sorry,” Raihan says, when they get a moment alone. “Piers, I know... I know how much it hurts.”
</p><p>
    And Piers feels like an ass, he does, because his first knee-jerk response
    is to say no, he doesn’t, no one does. No one’s ever felt raw the way he
    does, one one’s ever been carved up and had salt rubbed into each and every
    cranny, the way he does. Except… except, Raihan does know. Raihan has
    always know.
</p><p>
    He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. He’s not allowed to break, not in
    front of people who need him to hold himself together and show them the
    way. He can’t break, not where Marnie might see. Raihan is barely old
    enough to stand on his own, he shouldn’t have to carry him too. He’s the
    adult here, he’s the one that’s supposed to carry on.
</p><p>
    <em>Resilient</em>
    .
</p><p>
    But then Raihan pulls him into a hug, all arms and legs, wrapped around him
    like he’s trying to holding him together with his bare hands, and Piers
    keens like his heart has split in half, right at the middle. Raihan doesn’t
    say anything, when Piers wails like a small child, digging his nails into
    his back. Raihan just lets him have the moment to himself, to grieve and
    cry and hate and not be at all composed.
</p><p>
    He doesn’t remember when he falls asleep.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    A month before the Gym Challenge begins, Rose’s assistant comes in to try
    and con Piers into getting disqualified as an official Gym in the League.
</p><p>
    Piers expected as much and openly laughs in her face, when he shows her
    around town – a fraction of what it once was, sure, but by now definitely a
    town, once more – and guides her to the field he’d set aside when they
    began rebuilding. No more labyrinths, in Spikemuth, not beyond the
    decidedly erratic layout of its streets, but the dimensions are exact to
    League standards. They have stands and concessionaries even.
</p><p>
    Nothing objectionable at all, from the way they’ve laid out his Gym, at
    least not according to all the League rulebooks that Piers used to design
    it.
</p><p>
    The woman purses her lips and looks at him like she wants to personally
    claw out his eyes with her bare hands, but all she does is tell him the
    Dark badge has been redesigned, and that he’ll receive the new ones in
    Motostoke, after the opening ceremony.
</p><p>
    Traditionally, the badges of each Gym carry the emblem of the Gym
    associated with it, regardless of the type the Gym happened to be focused
    on at any given time. It’s rare for Gyms to change the type they
    specialized on, but it has happened before, Piers knows: Motostoke had
    always traditionally been a Steel type Gym, before the current leader
    inherited, and there are rumors floating about that Stow-on-Side’s Gym
    Leader has said he will not inherit to someone who uses Psychic types like
    he does. Apparently, the new designs are meant to be more reflective of the
    type of the Gym, at the time they were earned, to accommodate for any…
    future changes.
</p><p>
    They put a devil on his badges and he’s supposed to not bristle at the
    implications.
</p><p>
    “Who knows,” she drawls at him, on her way out, “Spikemuth Gym might end up
    being Steel type, one day.”
</p><p>
    Piers’ answer to that is a one finger gesture on each hand, no words
    necessary.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    For the first time in decades, the Spikemuth Gym Leader doesn’t appear in
    the opening ceremony of the Gym Challenge.
</p><p>
    Not because Piers didn’t go – he did, made the trip with Raihan and Marnie,
    a breath of fresh air and a chance to step away and prove to himself that
    Spikemuth will not collapse into nothing if he’s not there to fuss about
    everything – but because upon reaching the Stadium, one of the League goons
    takes him aside rather forcefully.
</p><p>
    “Mr. Rose asked that you abstain,” he explains, with the kind of fake
    empathy that makes Piers’ left eyelid twitch on reflex. “Considering the
    new rebranding of the Gym Challenge around the types associated with each
    Gym, he figured a bit of mystery will do Spikemuth good.” He smiles, and
    Piers doesn’t deck him a right hook right there and there because even he
    knows better than to give them more reason to retaliate. “After all that’s
    happened.”
</p><p>
    “Tell the Chairman to pay more attention to his mining operations, and
    leave Spikemuth to me,” Piers snaps, and then storms off before he loses
    his temper.
</p><p>
    Raihan finally confronts him about the whole thing with Rose, once the
    ceremony is over: the lack of coverage on the destruction of Spikemuth, the
    lack of support for the rebuilding of the town, the way he’d rerouted all
    of Spikemuth’s traditional sponsors away from Piers, and then Piers’
    absence in the pitch, along the other Gym Leaders.
</p><p>
    “Fuck that,” Raihan says, bristling and baring his teeth, and he’s not so
    tiny anymore, not so tame. Piers remembers he’s grown now, old enough to
    hold his weight and strong enough to throw it around, if need be. “I’m
    going on strike, see how the big windbag likes it, then!”
</p><p>
    Piers kicks him, because what else is he supposed to do? Be touched by the
    loyalty and frankly stupid willingness to tank his career for his sake?
    Raihan is going to be champion, one day, he can’t throw that away just
    because Piers can’t play nice.
</p><p>
    “You’re going to go out there,” Piers tells him, reaching up to grab the
    collar of his hoodie and tugging him down so he’s hissing the words right
    into Raihan’s face, “and you’re going to pretend nothing is wrong at all.”
</p><p>
    “But-“
</p><p>
    “Shut the fuck up, Raihan,” Piers snarls, the same tone he uses around
    Spikemuth to make people stop being dumb. “You have a legacy to honor and
    an inheritance to uphold.” He lets him go, as he flinches back. “So do I.
    Fuck Rose and everything he represents, he’s not worth throwing all of that
    away.”
</p><p>
    “So you’re just gonna let him get away with it?” Raihan insists, gnashing
    his teeth furiously. “Just like that?”
</p><p>
    “Obviously not,” Piers snorts, “but if I want to fuck him up, get him good
    and proper for all the shit he owes me? Owes my town? I gotta play the long
    game. Gotta let him think he’s got me sorted, so he gets nice and
    complacent. Then he’s gonna pay for it, all of it.”
</p><p>
    “It’s not fair,” Raihan whines, because deep down, he’s still the dumb kid
    Piers picked up in the Wild Area and never really sent away.
</p><p>
    “Nah,” Piers agrees, and then reaches out to punch his arm, playful. “But
    life ain’t, and only losers expect it to be.”
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Life goes on.
</p><p>
    Spikemuth thrives, Piers makes music in his spare time, and despite how
    popular it becomes in town, he’s not sure there’s any real merit on it, or
    it’s just his people being nice to him. Day in, day out, the new normal
    settles in.
</p><p>
    Most of the year, Piers is busy looking after his sister and finding
    creative ways to keep her happy. Once a year, he accompanies Raihan out
    into the Lake of Outrage, and provided they don’t get almost killed by a
    pack of angry noivern, they have a good time. Then it’s League season, and
    he goes all the way to Motostoke, and every time, they turn him away from
    the opening ceremony. He could not go, he supposes, but that’d give Rose an
    edge to claim he’s slacking off as Gym Leader and not doing his job
    properly. So fuck that.
</p><p>
    Piers receives the scant kids that get through Circhester, during the Gym
    Challenge, and tests how resilient they are. He makes them navigate the
    labyrinth that the town has become until they find their way to him, and
    then confronts them in battle, without the convenient crutch of dynamaxing.
</p><p>
    “You went easy on him,” Marnie tells him, one day, after he sees the latest
    challenger who got his badge out of the town gates.
</p><p>
    “What?” Piers looks down at her with an arched eyebrow.
</p><p>
    “I’ve seen you fight Raihan,” Marnie says, tone unmistakably accusatory.
    “Hell, I’ve fought you. You’d’ve won.”
</p><p>
    Piers snorts and reaches a hand down to ruffle her hair.
</p><p>
    “That’s not the point, love,” he says, hand sliding along the back of her
    head to curl on her shoulders and tuck her against his side. “Gym battles
    aren’t about <em>winning</em>. They’re about testing the challengers.”
</p><p>
    “When I’m Gym Leader,” Marnie announces loudly, crossing her arms over her
chest with all the conviction only a ten-year-old can have, “it’ll    <em>be</em> about winning.”
</p><p>
    “Oh?” Piers asks, tugging her back home, “you’re inheriting now?”
</p><p>
    “Who else is gonna inherit from you, dummy?” Marnie rolls her eyes and
    puffs up her cheeks, much like her morpeko. “It’s only you and me, now.”
</p><p>
    “I guess,” Piers admits, frowning at his feet. “You don’t have to, though.
    If you don’t want it.”
</p><p>
    “I dunno,” Marnie shrugs, “can we have ice-cream for dinner?”
</p><p>
    Piers snorts.
</p><p>
    “No,” he says, one eyebrow arched when she gives him a wounded look, “but
    we can have ice-cream <em>before</em> dinner.”
</p><p>
    He focuses on Marnie’s opinions of the Gym challengers he’s faced so far
    this season, rather than contemplate the suddenly foreign concept of
    finding someone to inherit the Gym from him. He’s barely twenty-two,
    surely, he’s too young to pass the torch already? He’s barely done anything
    with his post anyway.
</p><p>
    And besides, until Rose is dealt with, Spikemuth will always be at risk,
    and it’d be dishonest and irresponsible of him to pass that along to
    someone else.
</p><p>
    But the thought lingers, long after he’s put Marnie to bed. What would he
    even do, if he didn’t have to be Gym Leader?
</p><p>
    He decides not to indulge the thought, he’s all stocked up on bitterness,
    as it is.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    “I’m in love with Lee… Leon,” Raihan says, as they sit on his couch,
    shoulder to shoulder, marathoning a dumb TV show about dragons and castles
    and sex and gore, that Raihan whined about until Piers agreed to watch with him,
    “I think.”
</p><p>
    Piers blinks, frowns and finally looks away from another duel of wits on
    screen to give Raihan a dubious look.
</p><p>
    “Okay.”
</p><p>
    “Yeah,” Raihan says, tilting back his beer and looking at Piers over the
    corner of his eye.
</p><p>
    “Congratulations?” Piers says, not quite sure what Raihan expects of him.
</p><p>
    “I mean, I haven’t <em>told</em> him that I’m in love with him,” he
    replies, a dust of warmth over the bridge of his nose, as he pointedly
    looks away. “It’s not… he might not feel the same.”
</p><p>
    “So tell him,” Piers snorts, “and then you’ll know.”
</p><p>
    “I can’t just <em>tell</em> him,” Raihan splutters, looking vaguely
    scandalized. “You don’t just… walk up to a guy and open the conversation
    with, FYI, I’ve loved you since I was thirteen, please feel free to rail me
    onto the nearest solid surface.”
</p><p>
    “I mean,” Piers says, arching an eyebrow at Raihan’s dramatics, “it’ll get
    you an answer.”
</p><p>
    “A restraining order is not the kind of answer I want, Piers!”
</p><p>
    Piers laughs.
</p><p>
    “But it <em>is</em> an answer.”
</p><p>
    Raihan gives him a wounded look, and Piers realizes the jab landed a bit
    too close to home.
</p><p>
    “Eat my ass, Piers,” Raihan mutters, shrinking away to the other side of
    the couch, “not everyone has people throwing themselves at their dick all
    the time.”
</p><p>
    Piers stares.
</p><p>
    “…sorry, what.”
</p><p>
    Raihan glowers.
</p><p>
    “I’ve seen your fansites,” he says, full of indignant accusations.
</p><p>
    <em>I have fansites?</em>
    Piers does not ask, because the look on Raihan’s eyes is bordering actual
    anger.
</p><p>
    “Why the hell were you trolling those?” He asks instead, to deflect the
    conversation into something, hopefully, less volatile.
</p><p>
    “’cause I was looking for funny shit to annoy you with,” Raihan admits
    easily, shrugging, “but it’s all about how much they want to worship your
    cock and that’s just. Yeah.”
</p><p>
    “Raihan, I’m not fucking my fans,” Piers says, with the awkward air of
    someone not entirely sure why he’s been forced to spell out the obvious.
    “I’m not fucking anyone, matter of fact.”
</p><p>
    “But you could be,” Raihan points out, eyes narrowed.
</p><p>
    “I guess?” Piers shrugs. “I’m not, though.”
</p><p>
    What follows is one of the dumbest conversations he’s ever had in his life,
    followed by some of the stupidest things he’s ever done.
</p><p>
    They didn’t even have the decency to be drunk for the duration, either.
</p><p>
    “Let’s not,” Piers says, words pressed against the sharp edge of a
    collarbone, long after they’re done, “do that again.”
</p><p>
    Raihan is quiet for three breaths and then he shrugs.
</p><p>
    “You okay?”
</p><p>
    Piers sits up, digs his fingers into his hair, rubbing hard onto his scalp
    and mussing up his hair, before he reaches into the low table and digs out
    his cigarettes. He’s keenly aware of the cliché he’s enacting, but he’s not
    in the mood to care.
</p><p>
    “I’m fine,” he sighs, because… well, he is, and then he looks out of the
    corner of his eye at the guarded, nervous look in Raihan’s face, because
    the dumb idiot acted without thinking again, and Piers should know better
    than to let him, but well. “Afraid that’s not a benefit you’re getting out
    of this friendship, though, feel free to whine online about it.”
</p><p>
    Raihan groans and laughs, all at once, an awkward noise as dumb and awkward
    as he is, rolling onto his side and hiding his face into the cushions of
    the couch.
</p><p>
    “Fuck off, Piers.”
</p><p>
    He rather thinks he won’t, despite it all.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    All it takes to dispel the awkward, afterwards, is making up a little tune
    to taunt him about his feelings for his rival.
</p><p>
    And then that, too, folds itself into the well-worn routines of his life,
    and he’s certain that at least he managed not to completely alienate his
    oldest, dearest friend.
</p><p>
    So at least there’s that.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Days become weeks, become months, become years.
</p><p>
    One day, Piers wakes up in his bed, buried in a sea of hair, and he doesn’t
    immediately want to throw himself headfirst into the sea. Instead, he finds
    himself going through the motions of his life, and finds nothing in it
    really chafes that much. He’s found his place, in the rundown streets and
    the proud, taunting smiles of the people around him. Sure, Spikemuth is
    nowhere near as flourishing as other towns around Galar, but they’re feral
    and free, and they still know the true value of Dark.
</p><p>
    And he understands, now, he thinks, what resilient means.
</p><p>
    His sister is old enough to head out and brave the Gym Challenge on her
    own, now. Piers doesn’t order his Gym Trainers to go after her and make
    sure to keep her safe. He doesn’t have to. He watches her go, surrounded by
    Team Yell grunts, and doesn’t walk away until they’ve disappeared into the
    tunnel connecting with route 7. He could have gone with her, of course,
    since he still goes to the opening ceremony every year, and he still gets
    turned away, every time, but he wants Marnie to have her own adventure,
    without an overbearing older brother looking over her shoulder and making
    her self-conscious.
</p><p>
    “You should join the Championship Cup this year.”
</p><p>
    He doesn’t expect to find his Dad sitting in the kitchen, when he gets
    home. He looks… old. Grey around the edges, which is pretty hypocritical
    coming from Piers, but he certainly didn’t inherit his hair from the old
    man.
</p><p>
    “I thought you were in Alola,” Piers says instead, walking past him to
    serve himself a coffee, careful to keep his eyes straight ahead.
</p><p>
    “Nanu was in Alola,” his Dad points out with a little shrug. “He’s good at
    tracking whispers. Whispers that say things are in motion, inside Macro
    Cosmo. I figured you’d like to know,” he adds, standing up, clearly intent
    on leaving. “That’s why we’re here. Both of us.”
</p><p>
    And maybe it’s been long enough, that the edge has dulled. Maybe he’s still
    half asleep. Maybe he’s scared of how empty the house feels, without Marnie
    there.
</p><p>
    Maybe he’s just found a brand-new expression for all his self-loathing.
</p><p>
    “I’m making eggs,” Piers says, looking at him over his shoulder, “if you
    want breakfast.”
</p><p>
    His Dad smiles, the same sharp smile Marnie inherited from him.
</p><p>
    “That’d be lovely, actually.”
</p>
<hr/><p>
    It’s an eventful Gym Challenge, for sure.
</p><p>
    Piers has ears on the ground, this time around, so the rumors come in
    fresh, from wherever Team Yell happens to be. Thanks to that, he’s prepared
    to face the three other kids that look like they’ll stand a chance to make
    it to the finals, alongside Marnie.
</p><p>
    Admittedly, when he suggested the rebuilt Spikemuth should have a way to
    keep unwanted people out, he never expected his Gym Trainers would decide
    to use that against challengers.
</p><p>
    But Marnie sees that it doesn’t stop her or her friends, and all three of
    them pass through his challenge and win their badges fair and square. The
    girl, though, Gloria, she strikes a chord on Piers. There’s something about
    the way she battles, and her affinity for Poison types, that makes Piers
    feel almost kindred to her. Like she’s the sort of person who would
    understand the old Spikemuth adage.
</p><p>
    She’s also someone who stands a chance to steal Raihan’s victory, if he’s
    not careful, but he reckons he’ll welcome the challenge regardless.
</p><p>
    Despite his misgivings about Wyndon – it's Rose’s town, through and
    through, and Piers feels as uncomfortable being there, as he is at the idea
    of Rose stepping into Spikemuth ever again – he makes the trip and invokes
    his right as Gym Leader to join the Cup, for the first time since he
    inherited.
</p><p>
    He expects to get eliminated on the first round, really, but finds, much to
    his own surprise, that he’s giving the Motostoke Gym Leader a thorough
    trashing and throwing the Stadium into a frenzy. Then, he faces Raihan in
    the field, and it’s like they’re back in Spikemuth, friendly matches just
    for fun, right up until Raihan gigantamaxes his duraludon. Paul takes it
    down with a counter, after the asshole makes short work of the rest of his
    team, but he doesn’t have enough energy to corner flygon right after. Piers
    is proud of his team for their hard work, and when he clasps Raihan’s hand,
    he lets himself be pulled into a hug as the crowd goes wild.
</p><p>
    “It must be killing Rose,” Raihan whispers at him, before he pulls away and
    leads him back to the waiting room, one arm throw affectionately over his
    shoulders, “to see how much the crowd loves you.”
</p><p>
    “Why wouldn’t they love me?” Piers asks, one eyebrow arched, “I’m the best
    fucking thing they’ll never see again.”
</p><p>
    Marnie throws a tantrum at him about the loss, though, having hoped he’d
    avenge her after Gloria defeated her. Piers rather thinks it’s for the
    best, really, defeat might do his sister good, so long as he’s not expected
    to be the one to do it. Raihan tries, Piers can see it, he tries his best,
    and his best ends up coming up short, just barely. And then, the three of
    them are sitting there in the front row, all set to watch Gloria challenge
    Leon and prove her worth.
</p><p>
    Instead, everything goes to shit.
</p><p>
    Piers finds himself curled up around Marnie, belatedly realizing Raihan has
    thrown himself over them both, as the venomous light erupts from the
    ground. Then, as Rose makes his stupid announcement and they realize
    they’re not going to <em>immediately</em> die, Raihan runs towards the
    waiting room, and Piers and Marnie follow suit. Leon comes storming out of
    the pitch and nearly runs over Raihan, but rather than stumble, they share
    a look and they’re off, presumably back to Hammerlocke.
</p><p>
    Of course, if it’s really the Darkest Day, disaster come again, they won’t
    stand a chance.
</p><p>
    “You said you were from Postwick,” Piers says, approaching Gloria and the
    champion’s baby brother, who are still fretting about how to help and what
    to do, even though they’re dumb children who shouldn’t be involved at all.
    “Didn’t you?”
</p><p>
    Gloria stares at him, sharp little thing, well aware she never said
    anything of the sort.
</p><p>
Piers smiles at her, because in Spikemuth, stories are told to    <em>children</em> for a reason.
</p><p>
    “There’s a forest, south of Postwick, foggy like anything,” Piers says,
    eyebrows arched, “you’ve ever wondered <em>what</em> slumbers in the
    Slumbering Weald?”
</p><p>
    Piers watches their eyes widen almost comically, and then they’re off,
    scrambling to cross the entirety of Galar in time to save the world. No
    pressure.
</p><p>
    “You’re not going with them?”
</p><p>
    Piers finds his Dad and his partner, Nanu, standing idly by.
</p><p>
    “Never really been the heroic type,” Piers confesses, “besides, I want to
    go with you,” he adds, nodding at Nanu, “when you go get him.”
</p><p>
    “I’m not getting anyone,” Nanu says, eyebrows arched, “I’m retired.” He
    rolls his eyes. “And even if I weren’t, mind, they want him alive.”
</p><p>
    “Exactly why Dad’s staying here with Marnie, yeah,” Piers retorts
    innocently, “and why I’m going with you.”
</p><p>
    “Sly little thing,” his Dad laughs, shaking his head. “You’re your mother’s
    child.”
</p><p>
    “<em>Grimsley</em>,” Nanu says, warningly.
</p><p>
    “Oh, let the boy have his moment,” his Dad sighs, “he is right, you know.
    Better chances overall, that he doesn’t feed Rose to his obstagoon, one
    morsel at the time.”
</p><p>
    Nanu sighs, shoulders slumping.
</p><p>
    “Let’s go.”
</p>
<hr/><p>
    They find Rose sitting on his ass in the busted power plant beneath
    Hammerlocke. Above the Stadium, the battle for the fate of Galar rages on,
    but Piers finds he can hardly bring himself to care.
</p><p>
    “I need him alive, Piers,” Nanu says, when Piers kicks Rose in the face
    before he can open his mouth and spew more poison their way.
</p><p>
    “You said alive,” Piers replies, watching as Rose curls on the floor,
    holding his broken nose, “you didn’t say <em>conscious</em>.” Piers pauses
    significantly. “Or breathing.”
</p><p>
    “Definitely need him breathing,” Nanu insists, not even wincing when Piers
    kicks Rose again. “Please.”
</p><p>
    “They’re gonna put you in a tiny black box,” Piers drawls, leaning in to
    grab the lapel of Rose’s suit and pulling him up so he’s speaking right
    into his face, admiring his handywork. “A cramped, dark, empty thing, like
    your skull, and then they’re going to throw out the key into the sea.”
</p><p>
    “She didn’t have to die,” Rose whispers, hysterical laughter bubbling
    behind his teeth, and Piers hears the roar of fury rush through his veins,
    “if only she’d listened—”
</p><p>
    It would be easy, he thinks, to curl his fingers around Rose’s neck. It
    would be. Or to kick him the wrong way. Who would be angry, now? Who would
    care, after all he’s done? It would be oh so easy, Piers thinks, to make
    his Dad lose that gamble.
</p><p>
    “Piers!”
</p><p>
    Dark is not evil, it’s resilient.
</p><p>
    “Take him away,” Piers whispers, releasing his grip, watching impassively
    as Rose writhes on the floor, gasping for breath.
</p><p>
    The men accompanying Nanu rush in to put Rose in cuffs, and they’re perhaps
    a tad rougher about it than strictly necessary.
</p><p>
    “Oh, Chairman Rose,” Nanu says, voice soft, “why did you have to resist
    arrest?”
</p><p>
    Rose laughs and laughs, and all Piers can think is, good fucking riddance,
    to it all.
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Leon fails to contain the titan, much like Piers expected him to. Gloria
    and Hop, though, prove themselves worthy to summon the warriors from the
    Weald, also like Piers had expected. Then Gloria manages to nonchalantly
    capture the titan, very much unlike anything Piers ever expected to happen,
    but at least that means it’s all over.
</p><p>
    Raihan hugs him so hard his feet no longer touch the ground. Piers is
    feeling rather gracious all things considered, and allows this to happen
    without fussing even a little bit.
</p><p>
    “It’s over,” Raihan says, letting out a sharp breath. “Where’s Rose?”
</p><p>
    “Dealt with,” Piers says laconically, as soon as he’s back on his feet. He
    looks up at Raihan and shrugs. “I’m retiring, Marnie is inheriting from
    me.”
</p><p>
    “Wha—”
</p><p>
    “Would you like to meet my Dad’s boyfriend?” Piers asks, before Raihan can
    really put the question together, secretly delighted in the glorious
    splutter he’s just caused. “And my Dad? We’re having dinner in Wyndon, once
    all this is wrapped up.”
</p><p>
    Raihan opens and closes his mouth a few times, before he buries his face
    into his hands, laughing in despair.
</p><p>
    “What the hell, why not.”
</p>
<hr/><p>
    Dark is not evil, it’s resilient.
</p><p>
But it’s more than just that. It’s everything that goes into it, to    <em>make</em> it resilient. It’s strength and patience and kindness and
    hope and stubbornness and pride. It’s taking every twisted, broken thing,
    and refusing to let it go to waste.
</p><p>
    Piers takes a deep breath and then steps out into the stage, right at the
    center of Hammerlocke Stadium, mic in hand.
</p><p>
    Dark is not evil, and it’s about damn time Galar learned that, one song at
    the time.
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come hang out on <a href="https://twitter.com/notavodkashot">Twitter</a>, if you'd like.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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